Discogs

History

Discogs was started in 2000 by Kevin Lewandowski who worked as a programmer at Intel. It was originally started from a computer in Lewandowski's closet and was limited to electronic music. By 2015, Discogs had 37 employees, 3 million users, and a monthly traffic of 20 million visits.

In 2005, Discogs launched a marketplace where users can buy and sell albums. The Discogs Marketplace is modeled similar to Amazon and eBay, where sellers offer items for sale and a fee is charged on the sold item. Its album listings are filterable by the country they ship from, format, currency, genre, style, format description, media condition, year released, seller name, and whether the buyer is invited to "make an offer."

In July 2007, a new subscription-based system for sellers was introduced on the site, called Market Price History. It gave premium users access to the past price items that were sold for up to 12 months ago by previous sellers who had sold exactly the same release (though 60 days of information was free). At the same time, the US$12 per year charge for advanced subscriptions was abolished, as it was felt that the extra features should be made available to all subscribers, now that a different revenue stream had been found from sellers and purchasers. Later that year, all paid access features were discarded and full use of the site became free of charge, allowing all users to view the full 12-month Market Price History of each item.

In addition to the database and marketplace, Discogs operates an online editorial platform, Discogs Digs, which publishes interviews and record-collection profiles under series such as "Vinylogue" and has featured DJs and collectors including Thurston Moore, Colleen "Cosmo" Murphy, DJ Marky and Argentine selector and music curator Soledad Rodríguez Zubieta (SRZ).

References

References

1. "Terms of Service". Discogs.
2. "Privacy Policy". Discogs.
3. Greenwald, David. (2015-12-29). "Inside Discogs, Beaverton's $100 million record store".
4. (Sep 8, 2021). "Discogs: what is it, where it came from, and how to use it".
5. Sisario, Ben. (2015-12-29). "Discogs Turns Record Collectors' Obsessions Into Big Business". The New York Times.
6. Lewandowski, Kevin. (March 4, 2016). "Guest Column - How Discogs Organised the World's Record Collection".
7. "Find Music on Discogs".
8. (26 Mar 2010). "Discogs: Vinyl revolution". Resident Advisor.
9. Garber, David. (2015-02-26). "How Discogs Dragged Record Collecting Into the 21st Century". Vice.
10. (2018-05-02). "Vinyl collectors spent millions on Discogs last year". BBC News.
11. (9 April 2025). "Vinylogue – Soledad Rodríguez Zubieta".
12. "Vinylogue: Thurston Moore and the Smell of Vinyl".
13. "Vinylogue: Deep Listening with Colleen "Cosmo" Murphy".
14. "Vinylogue: DJ Marky on Vinyl's Enduring Magic".